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Farm Tennis

Rob Magnuson Smith

‘Nobody bothered him when he was playing tennis. No matter how long he stayed out there, the door never took breaks.’

Fiction by Rob Magnuson Smith.

This Time of Dying

Reina James

An extract from This Time of Dying by Reina James.

Island Song

Madeleine Bunting

An extract from Madeleine Bunting’s first novel.

Mama’s Last Hug

Frans de Waal

‘Watching behaviour comes naturally to me, so much so that I may be overdoing it.’

Line A—B

Mark Blacklock

‘Never was a man so deep in thought.’
An extract from Mark Blacklock’s new novel.

The Medical Detective

Sandra Hempel

An extract from Sandra Hempel’s The Medical Detective, which follows the story of the man who identified – and helped stop – the cholera pandemic of the 1830s.

From the Spanish Flu to Covid-19

Reina James

Reina James compares our response to Covid-19 to the reaction to the Spanish Flu in 1918.

Red Sands

Caroline Crampton

‘They appear against the horizon as the boat slowly sweeps closer into the estuary.’

A Source

Frances Leviston

‘The next editor of the university newspaper was chosen each year by a panel.’

A new short story by Frances Leviston, from her forthcoming collection The Voice in My Ear.

The Great Homecoming

Anna Kim

Read an excerpt from The Great Homecoming by Anna Kim, a novel of love and loss in the wake of the Korean war.

Don’t Look at Me Like That

Diana Athill

‘When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me, and it wasn’t far from true.’

Homeland

Walter Kempowski

‘I was suckled by Mother Earth, he would reflect on occasion, and he would stretch, feeling new strength in his veins.’

Black Car

Will Boast

‘It got into you. How many scrapes had he seen? How many wrecks?’ New fiction from Will Boast.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones

Edoardo Albert

Edoardo Albert, author of Warrior, writes about five archaeological findings that brought the past to life.